


Spotlight Effect

by withaflashoflove



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-04 08:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10272683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withaflashoflove/pseuds/withaflashoflove
Summary: Westallen AU: Iris has a target on her back and Barry's the boy who falls in love with her





	1. Chapter 1

Iris watches as the cars pass by on the street in her peripheral vision. Not too long ago, her own car was doing the same, driving without worry at the same speed as everyone else, minding its own business with the heater on and the music loud...when some other car decided to crash into hers and pummel it down the side of the cliff.

It’s a miracle she survived, really. The paramedic currently tending to her couldn’t believe his eyes as he started patching her up, after the police department pulled her out of the broken mess of glass and metal. Still, here she was.

“Where does it hurt the most?”

She blinks a few times to get the white light out of her eyes. She figures the medic treating her is testing for responsiveness or something along those lines, with his clicky flashlight pen thing that she notes would be very useful when she’s going undercover. But she feels fine, mentally wise. Physically, she feels like a car just ran her over, which isn’t too far from the reality of the situation.

“Iris,” he calls again, “can you hear me?”

She brings her right hand over to her left cheek. “Here,” she signals.

They managed to bring her back up to the side of the road, but she’s pretty sure her car is completely totaled, which is just her luck. It’s not enough to be running late to a dinner with her brother. Now, she just can’t get there at all. And she has to explain to her parents and brother that someone tried to kill her. Shouldn’t be too hard. She’s expecting a lecture from her dad about quitting journalism. Other than that, it should be smooth-sailing.

“Okay,” the medic’s voice sounds again. He talks too much, she decides. Rationally, she knows he’s just doing his job and probably trying to keep her alive, but another part of her is annoyed and cold and really just wants to go home. “Can you open your mouth?”

She does.

His light is back on, shining inside her mouth. When he seems to find - or not find - what he’s looking for, he turns it off.

The red light from the ambulance is reflecting off all the yellow headlights of the cars coming towards her. It looks like a mirage of red and yellow and it’s making her head spin a little, the dizziness catching up to her. She shuts her eyes again for a split second to avoid any more colors.

“You’re not bleeding” -

Iris blinks a few times.

\- “and you don’t have any cuts. I do see some swelling on your cheek, which means you’ve injured the soft tissue there.”

She nods. Really,  _ she  _ didn’t injure anything, the maniac who hit her did. But she swallows her words.

“Your left arm’s stopped bleeding as well. Can you move it?” the medic asks.

She stares down at her left arm. It’s a lot cleaner than she remembers it being, the blood and dirt washed away. Iris tries very delicately to lift it up, but it only elicits a sharp intake of breath.

“Okay, okay,” the medic rushes to stabilize it, “it might be fractured or broken. I’m going to put a splint on it, alright?”

She groans.

She watches as him and his partner fuss over her, the partner holding two red boards, one on the bottom and one on the top of her arm, while the medic wraps some weird cloth around them to keep it in place. When they’ve finished their operation, her arm rests awkwardly, right in level with her clavicle. 

“Let’s get you to the hospital, Iris.”

She definitely doesn’t want to go. She hates hospitals, hates all the different smells and all the people and all the noises that come from machines she didn’t even know existed. Mainly, she hates feeling so powerless, confined to a bed and mandated to follow someone’s orders.

“Do I have to, Mr…”

“Call me Barry,” he smiles, and  _ oh right, that was his name! _ Barry. Barry the paramedic. She’s not sure she likes the sound of it, but it’s his name and his profession and just like everything else in this current situation, it’s beyond her control.

“Right. Barry,” Iris corrects. She takes another breath and gazes up at him. “Do I have to go?”

“You can’t move your arm,” he points out. “Better safe than sorry.”

“But do I  _ have  _ to?” she pleads again.

He furrows his eyebrows and she notices just how long his eyelashes are in the process, how they all flutter together when he blinks too hard. “I mean, legally no, you’re not bound to go. But, I’d advise it. It might be a serious injury and it’s better to get it checked out now than to go somewhere else, only to potentially make it worse.”

He’s right, she knows it. She just really doesn’t want to admit it.

“I’ll stay with you till we get you settled, okay?” Barry adds.

In that moment, Barry’s partner comes back, probably annoyed at why they weren’t driving anywhere. “Hi, Iris,” the woman smiles.

“Hello.”

“I’m going to recheck your vital signs, okay? Can you extend your right arm?”

So she does and the EMT - Caitlin, that’s her name, as shown via the tag she’s got clipped onto her gray polo sweatshirt reads - checks her blood pressure and pulse. Then a stethoscope is on her back and god, it feels  _ so  _ cold, even above her shirt.

She grimaces. 

“Are you okay?” Barry asks, the concern showing on his features.

“Fine. Just cold.”

He waits for Caitlin to finish before extending a hand out to Iris. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get you to the hospital.”

And she willingly takes his hand, because she’s got no fight left in her, the exhaustion catching up, the freezing weather making her shiver, and she’d rather be inside than outside at this point.

After Barry straps her into the gurney and shuts the ambulance doors, he drapes a blue blanket over her body.

“Do you want the heat on?” 

“Please,” Iris says, cuddling up with the blanket.

Barry turns it on and positions himself on the seat next to her the gurney. She watches him as he types away on his tablet, pausing every few seconds to look up at her, which she assumes he thinks he’s being sly about, but it’s not hard to notice a pair of eyes on her.

Iris looks around the ambulance. It’s smaller than she'd imagined, really a box of a room. There’s a self of compartments on her right side, filled with gloves, syringes, masks, and everything she never wants to be near ever again.

“You use all of this?”

“What’s that?”

“All of this,” Iris repeats, signaling to the shelf

“Oh yeah. We need to treat everything on scene, so we have to be prepared.”

Iris brings her eyes to look at him.

He looks a lot softer in the ambulance. There’s no red light shining on his face anymore, and he’s not sticking things in her eyes and nose, which makes him less menacing and definitely less annoying. Yet, she can’t decide how old he his, the remnants of a baby face still on his features, but the baggy eyes and strands of gray hair doing their best to give his age away.

Still, he’s pretty. A lot prettier than everything in this ambulance, at least.

“Are you feeling okay?” Barry asks.

She takes a breath and smirks. “As okay as I can be after almost being killed”

He laughs, presumably at her sarcasm, at least she hopes it’s that and not at her current state of being. He also has a very cute laugh; it’s soft, like the rest of him, and it makes her feel calmer on the spot.

“You see a lot of cases like mine?” she asks.

“Not really. Most of the time, we just get calls for people who have chest pain or anxiety or something. Rarely is it a hit-and-run accident that leaves a car totaled.”

“Yeahhh. I wish that weren’t the case.”

“What, the hit-and-run?”

“Yeah that,” Iris says, “and this” - she points to her arm and then to her cheek - “but mostly I just wish my car was okay. Think they can salvage it?”

“‘Fraid not,” he says apologetically, “it did a few 180 flips. Pretty sure the engine’s busted.”

She sighs. It’s her mom’s old car, that’s why she's so fond of it. Her parents divorced a long while back and her mom only ever visits on occasion, but she gave the car to Iris as a college graduation present. Iris had spent her childhood traveling in it, especially on road trips when her parents were still together, when her and her baby brother would fight over which radio station would play, when her family would take pit stops to load up on snacks and Iris would take the liberty of buying five different types of chocolate bars.

When her mom left home, Iris cried for weeks on end. The car left too, it left with Francine, and it felt like part of Iris would be gone forever. In some ways, 10 years felt so long, but in other ways, she could still remember every detail. Still, her mom knew - like mothers always know - the significance of that car to her, and it was the best present she could’ve ever gotten.

“Sentimental value?” Barry prods.

“Yeah,” she mourns, “it was my mom’s.”

“Well, at least it’s an excuse for you two to go car shopping, right? Spend some quality time together?”

She glances over at him and smiles genuinely for the first time all night. He’s got a knack for being optimistic, something that seems unfathomable to her in this moment. 

“I guess so.”

* * *

 

Barry keeps looking over to her. Usually his transports are never this eventful, but when it’s a hit-and-run operation that targets the one and only Iris West, one of this city’s most notable reporters, then it’s bound to bring some intrigue.

He never thought he’d meet her in person. He’s heard rumors, heard all the myths and stories about how she sometimes pops up at a crime scene, how her dad works with Central City PD, how other medics have seen her before and interacted with her, and really, it adds like five popularity points to whoever encounters her.

Little did he know he’d be the one tending to her when she got injured.

Barry decides she's a lot prettier than can ever be explained with words. Even with the swelling on her cheek, he can see how soft her skin is and how warm it feels. She's small, smaller than he expected, and when he was helping her into the ambulance, he had to make sure not to topple over her, to keep their heights level so it wouldn’t do more to intimate her or make her feel uncomfortable. And she has big doe eyes that crinkle when she smiles and a voice that he thinks he’ll never get tired of hearing.

“Barry!” 

He jolts out of his thoughts and looks at Caitlin.

“Did they find her a bed?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says quickly, “we need to get her over to trauma.”

Caitlin’s a good partner. She's a medical student and Barry really doesn’t know how she manages to stay alert and engaged in this job with the schedule she has under her belt. He’s back in school himself and he’s barely managing, even with the grace of coffee.

“Iris,” Barry says. When she looks up at him, his heart flutters just a little. And if he keeps at this, he might as well lose his job because... professionalism, this was not. Paramedics don’t develop crushes on their patients, that’s like the biggest unspoken rule in the EMS field.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he grins, “a doctor’s ready to see you, okay?”

“Mhm.”

Him and Caitlin work together to push the gurney through the hospital. It’s nearing the quiet time of the night, almost 9 p.m. and he can tell the staff’s exhausted, especially the nurses.

A few of them almost bump into him, and he has to swerve out of the way to avoid them.

“Okay,” Barry says, “I’m gonna go talk to the nurse, but I’ll be right back.”

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll go get the ambulance set up,” Caitlin says.

“Yeah great.”

He watches her walk out of the hospital again.

They’re still early in their shift. They’ve got another seven hours left till they can go home. He hates working the overnight shifts. Most of the time, it’s quiet, but usually there’s at least one overdose patient and he’s bracing himself for the call.

Right now, he feels wide awake. But that feeling will disappear come time 11 and he can only hope they have time to stop for a nap.

“Okay Barry,” Liz, a nurse he’s grown close to over his years working as a medic, says to him, “she’s all set.”

“Thank you.” He hands her the tablet so she can sign.

“So Iris West, huh? Fancy getting her.”

“I know. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Hit-and-run,” Barry says, “but I don’t know anything else about it.”

“Well, a nosy reporter with a death wish. I wonder why  _ anyone  _ would be targeting her.”

Barry cringes. Usually, he’s okay with the sarcasm, it’s a normal part of this entire process. But he doesn’t like thinking anyone at all is targeting Iris, especially not trying to get her killed.

“We don’t know that.”

Liz gapes at him. “Got a little crush there, Allen?”

“What? No! No!”

She grins.

“You come in here every night. You think I don’t notice when you’re a little too fond of the patient? You haven’t even cracked a single joke since you brought her in.”

Barry brings a hand to the nape of his neck. He lets out a sigh. “That obvious, huh?”

“I mean, I don’t blame you. She is pretty.”

She pats him on the back and walks away, and that signals the last thing Barry has to do.

He walks back over to Iris. He figures asking for her number would be a little too forward. Anymore small-talk might get his foot in his mouth, and he doesn’t want to risk it. Maybe saying bye is his best option.

“Iris,” Barry calls when he approaches her.

“Hi,” she smiles.

“They’re gonna take you in now. It shouldn’t be anything too serious, but you’ve probably fractured your arm.”

“To be fair, I don’t think  _ I  _ fractured it. It wasn’t my doing.”

“Oh!” He steps back, and there it is, the whole  _ foot-in-mouth  _ thing. “I didn’t mean to blame you, definitely not!”

“It’s okay, Barry. I’m teasing.” She grins at him and he lets out a sigh of relief. Really, it’d be best to stop talking now.

“Right, right. Well, I just wanted to say we have to go now, but I hope everything turns out okay.”

“Thank you. Both of you. I appreciate you convincing me to come here.”

He smiles. “Of course, it’s my job after all.”

“Right.”

He stares at her for a few seconds when she doesn’t break the eye contact, and he finds himself getting lost in her eyes. They’re big, like really big, and really brown and really beautiful. Part of him wants to tell her all of this, wishes he’d met her under different circumstances than this. The other part of him wants to keep his job and doesn’t want to scare her off. So he settles for, “I should probably get going. But I’ll check up on you in a couple of days, if that’s alright?”

“I look forward to it.”

When he’s back in the ambulance, Caitlin stares at him. “So, did you ask for her number?”

“What?"

“Come on, Barry. You usually never take this long to come back out after getting the nurse’s signature.”

And if it’s one thing he’s gotta work on, it’s being a hell of a lot less obvious when it comes to being starstruck. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Yes, dad,” Iris sighs into the phone.

Her father worries too much, it’s a fact, much like _the sky is blue_ or _the grass is green_ is a fact. Except this fact isn’t harmless, it’s more frustrating than anything. He’s got a good heart, that she knows, he just has terribly patriarchal ways of showing it.

“Yes, I’m still working at CCPN. No I’m not going to quit,” Iris groans. “I know you’re worried about me, but it’s just a fractured arm, I’m okay.”

“Please be careful, Iris,” Joe says, “don't go running around after danger.”

“I’ll be careful.” Iris pauses to let him finish his final thoughts. “Okay dad. Bye.”

She tosses the phone on the bed after he hangs up. Francine took this whole thing a lot better than her dad did when Iris told her. It was more of a _do you need me to come stay with you for a while_ conversation rather than a _there’s impending doom on your life, you need to quit your job and move back in with me_ conversation, which is the one she's been having with her dad for the past week.

She grimaces as she looks at her arm. It turned out to be a fractured humerus, as the doctor had explained to her. And apparently, it would take another seven weeks to heal entirely.

The night of the accident felt too weird, the more she thinks about it. She doesn’t know if it is hindsight bias, but ever since she left her interview that day, she felt like there were always a pair of eyes on her. Even when she got to CCPN, she couldn’t help but do a double take as she sat in her office. It’s not like Iris shies away from the adventure, getting the story has always been her calling, no matter the risks. But a hit-and-run scared her shitless, even if she didn’t want to show that fear.

Most of the time, she has to reassure other people, especially her dad. It’s not often that she can even get a moment of reflection or reassurance for herself from her family. Her mom’s busy being an environmental attorney and her brother’s got his engineering classes to worry about. As for her dad, he gives good pep talks when it’s anything _not_ related to her job.

She reaches out to the laptop on her bed.

A few weeks back Iris wrote an exposé about the Crisis Stabilization Center in Central City. It’s been the article that’s gotten the most recognition from the community; it even trended on social network sites for some time. She didn’t expect the reaction, though she did hope for it.

On her laptop, she opens up Central City’s website. Her article is still trending in the top five most clicked on stories, even two weeks after she published it. It’s sort of a bittersweet feeling. A big part of her is proud that so much attention has been given to it. Another part of her is upset that no one knew about this before.

The Crisis Behavior Center - or Exodus, as people who went there commonly referred to it - is basically the psych ward in the city. But while it hid under the guise of _treatment and recovery_ , it was really just full of bullshit marketing that did more harm to anyone who went to it. There was only one doctor who worked a single shift from 9-5. Patients who came in after this time couldn’t get the help they needed. When Iris talked to the nurses at the center, almost all of them said their schedules were hell-like. They dealt with patients to whom the only treatment they could legally give was a sedative.

On Iris’s first visit to the center, she saw _exactly_ five police officers standing around a mentally unstable patient with _exactly_ one nurse trying to calm him down. Nothing added up about that, nothing made sense about stigmatizing those with mental illness or treating them like they were criminals who needed to be restrained.

The next time she visited, she conducted her first round of interviews with the staff. She also took a tour of the hospital. Iris hated hospitals, she hated the noises that came from all the machines she never knew existed. But this hospital was another story. The thing she noticed most was how uncannily quiet it was. No one was speaking; she wasn’t even sure how many patients were being cared for in the rooms. The silence terrified her the most.

Her third visit involved interviewing the sole doctor. Dr. Jeremy Appengel. Iris’s first impression of him was cold, reserved, and borderline cruel. He stood in front of her wearing a grey suit under his white lab coat, with a stethoscope thrown haphazardly around his neck and a pair of glasses resting firmly on the bridge of his nose. She remembered the details because he made the room look sharp; not sharp in a good way, sharp in a run-away way. He was concise with his answers, didn’t really offer anything more than _everyone on the staff cares deeply about the patients._ It was the quickest interview she’d conducted, lasting all of 15 minutes. But she wasn’t upset, given his office was making her claustrophobic.

That encounter threw her off. So much so that she decided there was something hidden in the depth of this hospital, a massive cover-up that no one was saying anything about.

Which led to her interviewing the Department of Health, which led her to see just how underfunded the staff was, which led her to interview dispelled patients who were refused treatment because of petty reasons, which led to the story writing itself.

And every since she published it, she'd had a weird feeling that someone’s watching her. Maybe it was the added attention. Maybe it was because CCPN was buzzing with phone calls after the fact. Maybe it was because even her dad called and talked to her about it, which is something he really never did when it came to her investigative reporting.

It seemed farfetched. That someone would track her down for a story. But then again, a hit-and-run was something she never thought was plausible either and it happened to her.

She goes to stand up, a cup of coffee on her mind, but before she does, her phone buzzes.

Iris picks it up and stares at the screen. The number that stares back at her is unfamiliar.

She debates letting it go to voicemail, but decides against it at the last ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi hi,” comes a voice that sounds vaguely familiar. “This is Barry Allen, uhhh, your medic from last week.”

 _And that’s right, Barry._ Barry the paramedic. A week later and she still isn’t a fan of the sound of it.

“Hi, Barry,” Iris smiles into the phone.

“Hey. Sorry, I hope you don’t mind me calling,” he says, “I just wanted to check in and see if you were doing better?”

She lays back on her bed.

“I have a fractured humerus that’s gonna take another seven weeks to heal, which definitely isn’t good for my patience. But other than that, I’m doing okay.”

“Glad it’s a fracture and not a break. Not that either is ideal! But you know what I mean.”

She can’t figure out if he’s always this flustered or if it’s just a thing he does when talking to her. Still, she finds it cute, the high-pitched tone of his voice when he has to back-track, the way his whole body jumps and his hair rattles in unison. He did it at the hospital when she teased him about _not_ being responsible for the fracture.

“Yeah, I got you.”

An awkward silence passes by.

Iris thinks she hears indistinct chatters in the background, voices that she makes out to be a guy and a girl, but then Barry is speaking to her again.

“Have you been adjusting well to the cast?” he asks.

“Yeah it’s been okay. They just put a brace on, without the neck sling, so this is better. I don’t have to struggle too much with...you know...the whole clothes thing.”

She probably shouldn’t have said that. _The whole clothes thing?_ Might as well tell him she needs his help getting dressed.

“That’s good, that’s good. I’m glad it’s been an easy-ish transition.”

“It’s been better than I expected.”

Another pause.

“What did your family say when you told them? I know your dad’s a cop.”

She furrows her eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

“ _Everyone_ knows Joe West, Iris,” he laughs, “everyone’s really scared of him too.”

“He’s less terrifying once you get to know him, I promise. Really, he’s a big softie.”

“Probably because you’re his daughter.”

She grins. “Yeah, guess I’m lucky that way.”

She wants to ask him about his family, but she realizes there’s no basis for the question, she hardly even knows him. But she doesn’t want him to hang up either. So she asks, “how’s your week been?”

“You know, a few overnight shifts, a lot of calls, too little sleep. The usual.”

“Sorry to hear.”

“I’m used to it, it’s okay. I just wish people would stop calling 9-1-1 so much, especially when it’s not an emergency.”

“Yeah, my dad’s always complaining to me that people do that a lot.”

“We had a call where a guy was about half a block from the ambulance, but he couldn’t walk there so he needed us to transport him.”

“Why?”

“I think he just got tired of walking? He didn’t offer a memorable explanation.”

Iris laughs. “At least it’s better than the life-threatening calls, you know?”

“That’s true. I’d rather that than someone almost dying.”

And the conversation just took a turn for the dark, which isn’t particularly where she wanted to take it.

“Anyway, it’s alright. Like I said, a lot of calls, but most of them were calm.”

“I’m glad it’s been a calm week then.”

When he goes silent on the other end, she thinks now’s probably a good time to spare any more awkwardness and end the call. After all, she did have a coffee cup waiting for her and that was a good excuse to cut a conversation short.

But then...

“Would you wanna meet up at some point?” he asks hurriedly. “You don’t have to say yes! I just wanted to see whether maybe you’d be up for some coffee. Or maybe not coffee! Maybe tea, if you’re more of a tea person! We can even do coffee and tea, if you like both. Really, it’s up to you.”

She giggles. Maybe flustered is just his default.

And she's usually not the type to say yes to guy’s asking her out. Iris likes to be the one in control, in control of the initiation, the date, the conclusion, all of that. But for some reason, he’s making her change her ways, just a little, and be more flexible.

Maybe she can toss this one up to the universe with a justification of _he beat me to it._ Maybe she would’ve asked him if he called again.

Either way. She can’t not say yes.

“I’d love to, Barry.”

“Rr--really?” he asks, and the shock is obvious in his voice.

“Yes, really. But I am a much bigger fan of coffee than tea.”

“Okay! No problem! Coffee it is!”

“Okay,” she smiles.

“So, how about we meet tomorrow at Jitters? You know where that is, right?”

“Know where it is? I worked there for about 3 years.”

“Did you really?”

“Mhm. I think I would’ve recognized you if you were one of my regulars.”

“Yeah, you probably left before I started becoming a regular,” he laughs, “it’s my go-to coffee shop now.”

“Well that’s good. It’s still my favorite of the city as well.”

“Great! So then, I’ll meet you tomorrow? Say 11 o’clock?”

“I’ll see you then, Barry.”

When she hangs up the phone, she can’t help the smile that stays on her face, all through the time it takes to prepare the coffee, drink the coffee, and wash the dishes afterwards.

She's not sure whether this classifies as a date. But it doesn’t make her any less nervous about it. Because Barry Allen is cute. And maybe, just maybe, the universe has a plan for this.


	3. Chapter 3

Jitters always looks the same. The only thing that changes are the number of people occupying it.

Barry’s got a tab on it. If he comes before is 4 p.m. shift, it’s pretty quiet. The baristas are usually on their phones, some calling their family, others their significant others; some are on call with the bank, others are scrolling through their social media apps. The tables are empty, except for one or two. Usually, there’s a coffee date going on. Other times, it’s just a few college kids studying for exams. Mostly, it’s quiet and calm and just what he needs. He can get his coffee in record time, and get a decaf order for Caitlin, because really,  _ she's gotta cut down some,  _ and make his way out without an extra word.

If he comes before his night shift, it’s moderately busy. 8 p.m. is apparently a popular time for late coffee dates. Sometimes, he’ll notice the casual strollers who’ve been by themselves for what he presumes is all day. They’ll be buried in their laptop, still pretending to have the energy to do work, when really, they’re three coffee cups in and should’ve left two hours back. But nights at Jitters are fun. The glow of the moonlight is pretty outside and the baristas all have a little perk in their step because closing time is soon. If he’s lucky, they’ll let him sneak off with an extra scone and a good luck for his upcoming shift.

If he comes in the morning, it’s always the busiest. Like DMV busy, only less bad smells and more sweet sugar aromas, mixed in with the bitter scent of coffee. There’s also less anger. People aren’t so much dreading their time, they’re usually dreading the rest of the day, but the coffee helps; it’s that anchor through the storm. Today, he arrives in the late rush of the morning. He’s not on shift, which means he can take it slow. There’s no need for hurry, no need to push his way through the crowd of people to get his drinks before running out, no need to say sorry to the couple he accidently bumps into, no need to burn his hand from grabbing the to-go cups too quickly and watching the liquid drop hot on his hand.

When he walks in, he’s greeted by the same familiar sights. The baristas are scrambling to get the last of the morning orders ready. There’s a long line of people waiting, but a shorter line of people ordering. The tables are clearing out, with the last of businesswomen in their black pantsuits and their sharp heels and their phones pressed tight to their ears reaching for the door. 

And then there’s Iris. 

She's sitting at a table, her eyes out the window. He catches himself grinning as he looks at her, finds himself wondering what or who she's looking at, whether her eyes are crinkling at the dog barking at the police officer or whether they’re fixated on the kids pulling their parents along.

Nonetheless, she looks a lot prettier than anything else he’s ever seen. He decides it in this moment, while taking in the green button-down that hugs her body and the black leather jacket she's got draped over it. There’s a pen and notepad on the table in front of her, along with an empty cup, and he checks his watch to make sure he didn’t accidentally stand her up. 

It’s still 11 a.m. That’s when they agreed to, 11 a.m., but Iris beat him here.

Slowly, he walks over to her.

“Hi,” Barry blushes.

When she turns to look at him, his heart startles a little. He can see the dark red lipstick she's got on, the way it’s painted so perfectly on her lips, and it makes it so hard for him not to linger. 

“Hi, Barry,” she smiles.

“You’re early!”

“Yeah, I try to spend my mornings here when I get the chance. It’s Saturday, after all.”

He pulls up a chair opposite of her. “So no sleeping in today?”

“Thought I’d get some work done instead. And of course, I have a coffee date with you.”

So it  _ is  _ a date. Good, that’s good, because that was the intention.

Barry Allen is not the best at asking people out. He trips over his own words, or over his own feet sometimes, both literally and figuratively. He gets flustered, the shyness in him telling him to shut up, but his mouth doesn’t follow command.

Still, asking Iris out was easier. For one, it wasn’t in person, so it helped. He did drop the pen he was twirling about 20 times during the span of their conversation; he’s pretty sure the blush in his cheeks would’ve given him away had he been physically with her. So the phone helped play the mediator, helped the nerves not travel through the line, at least not  _ too  _ much.

“Looks like you’ve already ordered,” he notes, looking at the empty cup.

“Bad habit,” she grins, “but I could definitely go for a round two.”

“Okay, good! What do you want? I can go order.”

“On one condition,” Iris pauses.

He stares at her. “And that is…?”

“I’m paying.”

Barry laughs. “Not a chance. I invited you.”

“Yes, but you did technically save my life, so I think I owe you a coffee.”

“It’s just my job.”

“Barry.”

He meets her eyes to see something serious in them. And it’s when he realizes she isn’t so much  _ offering  _ as she is  _ deciding  _ it. It reminds him of Joe, how his word is final, how there’s not really an opportunity for negotiation because the bases are all covered and no argument will suffice.

“Okay, you’re paying.”

Iris pulls out her wallet. “Good. Watch my stuff?”

“Can do.”

She gets two steps away from the table before spinning back on her heel. “I forgot to ask what you want,” she laughs.

Barry shakes his head. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure. It’s fun to try new things.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

When she comes back with two steaming coffee mugs, Barry immediately realizes her arm is in a brace and he should probably help her carry the rest of the stuff.

Quickly he takes the mug from her left hand and sets it on the table, before running back to the counter to get the rest of her order.

When he comes back to the table and takes his first sip of coffee, he also realizes that Iris does not like her coffee sweet. Which is ironic because she's also ordered two cronuts, one for him and one for herself, along with two brownies, both of them for her.

“Are you big on chocolate?”

“I’m a sucker for sweets. Do you want one?”

“No no, all yours. I’m not the biggest fan,” he laughs.

“Seriously?! Desserts are the best!”

He scrunches his nose. “They can be a little overwhelming. I think one is fine every once in awhile, but” - he points to the three plates in front of her - “you seem to like living on the edge.”

“Guilty as charged. I  _ do  _ love my brownies.”

“Makes up for the lack of sugar you put in this drink,” he takes another sip of the Americano.

“That’s right,” Iris grins, taking her own sip, “my coffee’s gotta keep up with me.”

“Is that why it’s so strong?”

_ Real smooth, Barry _ .

“Indeed,” she confirms.

“But not sweet?”

She nods her head.

“...meaning you’re not sweet?” Barry pries.

Iris purses her lips and sets her coffee mug down. Tentatively, she reaches over to break a piece off one of the brownies, and slowly brings it up to her lips.

Barry watches attentively as she licks her fingers after finishing the bite. He’s not sure if she's teasing, if she's going purposefully slow for a reason, if she's letting her tongue linger on her finger for longer than usual, but it’s very effective, whatever plan she has in mind, and he can’t take his eyes off her.

“Sometimes, I drink it sweet. It depends on circumstance.”

“Which means you can be sweet...sometimes.”

“Exactly,” she smiles, bringing the mug to her lips, “it just depends on -”

“- circumstance,” Barry finishes the sentence.

“So,” Iris pauses, keeping her gaze steady on him, “tell me a little more about yourself, Barry Allen.”

“You remembered my last name?”

“You’re hard to forget.”

He cocks his head to the side, a huge smile encompassing his face. Maybe flirty’s the best word to describe her.

“Well, I’m a medic, as you know.”

“Mhm.”

“Ummm. I’ve got a pet turtle, if you need trivia about me.”

“You do not!”

“I do!” He nods, excitedly. “McSnurtle the turtle. You should meet her. She bites sometimes, but I think she’d be nice to you.”

“And why’s that, Barry?”

He watches her as she takes another sip of her mug, how her eyes never leave his, even when she goes to set the mug back down, how sometimes they dip down to his lips and then come back up, and he changes his mind, maybe  _ flirty  _ doesn’t encompass Iris West, maybe it’s  _ seductive. _

“You-you’re just...you’re nice.”

That earns him a laugh.

“Well,” she bites her lip, “glad you think so.”

They keep the back and forth banter up for a while. Iris asks him about his family: no siblings, dad’s a doctor, mom’s a real estate agent, they live in Coast City. He moved out to Central City three years ago, after graduating college and getting his EMS license, he has a roommate who’s an engineer, Cisco Ramon, owner of  _ Ramon Industries _ , all that sort of stuff.

“So did you always want to be a paramedic?” she asks, downing the last of her coffee.

Impressively, he notices she's finished all three desserts while he’s still working on his single cronut. 

And really, it’s not that she's the faster eater. It’s that she's making him do all the talking (which makes sense, ace reporter and all), and he’s too busy staring at her when she's talking to remember his food.

“Not really, no. Dad wanted me to be a doctor like him. I didn’t want to commit. So I chose this route first, to try and make up my mind.”

“And what have you decided?”

“That I don’t like the medical field as much as I’d hope,” he laughs.

She nods. “So, that’s no longer a career path?”

“I’m going for my CSI license right now. I think that’s where I belong.”

“Why’s that?”

He lets out a sigh. “This job has just made me so cynical to a lot of things. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of the compassion I had for people, and I don’t like it. There’s a lot of stress, little gratitude...a lot of death, which makes it hard. 

I guess I’d prefer working behind the scenes, when I can be of more use to bringing justice to the victim rather than not being able to save them.”

“That’s fair, yeah.”

“Plus,” he smiles a little smile, “biochemistry is seriously cool. It’s like  _ the  _ coolest thing.”

“A bit of a nerd?” Iris grins.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“It sounds like you have your mind made up and in the right space. It takes courage to realize when something isn’t working out anymore, so I hope you’re proud of that.”

She really is a wordsmith, isn’t she?

“Thanks, Iris. I really appreciate that.”

“It’s just the truth.”

They share a look and he can see the smile in her eyes. It radiates to her face, makes her eyes all crinkly, makes them a little bigger too, and my god, she really is the most beautiful person to grace the earth.

“Seems like you’re all about the truth, yeah?” he asks her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that last article you wrote. Has the entire field jumping through hoops.”

“Ahh,” Iris nods, realization dawning, “the Exodus one?”

“That’s the one. You really exposed all the faults of it. It takes guts to uncover a secret that big.”

She shrugs. “People weren’t getting the treatment they deserved and all the higher up leaders decided their pockets were worth more than others’ health. It’s not fair.”

“You’re right, it’s not.”

“I interviewed three medics, you know.”

“I do,” Barry confirms, “I know them all.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, it’s a small community. We’re all familiar with each other.”

“So you read the article?”

“I did. And honestly, their responses would’ve been mine.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm,” he nods. “All the people who work in this field know Exodus is a joke. Like we transport the patients over, we have to sign off on the paperwork, we know they’re not getting priority. But it’s beyond our control. It’s just where we’re told to take psych patients.”

“Shame.”

“There’s a lot of politics in this field. I mean, you know, you scratched the surface of it when you were writing that article probably. But when it comes to healthcare, especially for marginalized populations, it’s really hard to find a good outlet.”

“Well. I hope the article changes that, then,” Iris affirms.

“I think it already has. You’ve got a lot of people talking.”

She scrunches her nose. “It’s a bit daunting, honestly.”

“The attention?”

“Mhm. It always feels like there are eyes on me now. It’s a feeling I haven’t been able to shake ever since I published the story.”

And Barry realizes that he’s forgot to ask her about her health throughout this entire conversation. Because  _ of course _ , she just got hit by someone in a car who was probably out to get her, who might have had some malice towards her, unless it was a freak accident, and she's got a fracture to her arm that she needs to wear a brace for and her headspace probably isn’t all clear, but she's still taking the time to learn about him when it should be about her.

“How are you doing?” Barry asks, now concerned for her and frustrated with himself. “You know, since the accident.”

“I’m okay. Just learning to adapt to this” - she points to her arm - “brace thing.”

“Aside from that though. You said you feel like you’re being watched?”

“Yeah, it’s really weird.” She pauses for a few seconds, as though she's collecting her thoughts.

“I just...I don’t know. I’m not sure why anyone would come after me, but someone may have done it when they hit me with their car and drove off. And I’m not sure if it’s the added conversations, but I’ve had an odd feeling that the spotlight’s on me. Like...something...I don’t know...something is just waiting to happen.”

“Because of the article?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, “that’s when it started. When the feeling did, at least. It’s like there’s a pit in my stomach that I can’t shake.”

“You don’t think you’re being...targeted, do you?” Barry asks.

“I sure hope not. But again, it’s just this feeling, you know?”

He doesn’t, not really at least. Which is partially why he offers to walk her home after they finish their coffees and he eats the rest of his cronut. 

She lives close to Jitters, close enough where they get to her apartment within the span of 10 minutes. 

The main reason he offered though was because he didn’t want to leave her just yet. Maybe it was a crush, maybe it was just infatuation since he’d heard so much about her and he was finally meeting her, maybe he was just starstruck by her personality and beauty, but he didn’t want to leave yet.

So when they got to her apartment door and she smiled at him, he couldn’t help but go in for the hug, which she seemed to gladly reciprocate.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Barry whispers into her hair.

She pulls away just enough to look at him. “Thank you for checking in on me. I really enjoyed today.”

And Barry decides she's worth the risk, worth the fall, worth the chance, so he rubs his hands gently against her back and holds his breath while the question leaves his lips. “Would you wanna do it again sometime?”

He doesn’t release it till she kisses his cheek and whispers  _ yes _ before heading into her building.


	4. Chapter 4

“Hi, baby.”

Iris all but sprints to the front door the second she sees her mom walk in.

“Mom!” She jumps into her arms

“Oh my sweet girl,” Francine whispers into her hair.

Iris holds her tight, forgetting everything else for a few seconds.

She’d been trying to avoid having her mom come, but the more the weeks passed on, the more worried she was getting.

After her hit-and-run incident, it took Iris two weeks to fully get back into the swing of things. Not just work stuff. It was more of the personal investigation she was doing because of this nagging feeling.

The only people who knew about her fear were Scott and Linda. And they were helping her look for clues, look for anything that might give some sort of sign as to whether her fears has some real basis to them. That’s all she’d needed, just something to hold on to.

It was a few days ago that Linda called her, jolting her from her sleep, to tell her that they’d uncovered a trend on all of her articles.

Someone with the same IP address had been browsing through them all, every day, for months before her accident. And it seemed at least partly coincidental, but when they tried to track the IP address, nothing came up; it was a bust of an operation, and there were very little bread crumbs to go off of, but there was still _something._

She told Barry about the findings, because Barry was the only other person who she opened up to about this, and he promised her he’d get his friends to see if they could find anything else.

But through the rush of it all, through all of the anxiety and fear, through the readjusting and stress management, she just needed her mom, just needed to spend one day feeling protected and taken care of, instead of having to hold it all on her shoulders.

“I’m right here, baby,” her mom reassures.

“Sorry, I’m sorry -”

“Nonsense, Iris.” Francine pulls away, but keeps her palms firmly pressed against Iris’s back. “You never ever apologize for wanting me to visit.”

Iris nods. “Okay.” She takes a few more breaths and leans in to kiss her mom’s cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m always in your heart.”

And those words have the power to comfort Iris more than anything else.

Quickly, she helps her mom get her stuff into the apartment, taking her suitcase and bag inside her room.

When she comes back out, she finds her mom examining the kitchen counter.

“It’s clean.”

Iris grins. “You taught me how to keep homes neat and tidy.”

“And it’s a good size.”

“It is. I got lucky with it.”

Francine turns to face her daughter.

“Are you doing alright, being on your own?”

“What do you mean?”

“Iris,” her mom walks towards her, “I know it can’t be easy living alone when you feel like someone’s always got a pair of eyes on you.”

She lets out a sigh. “Usually, I love being home. But lately, I just crawl into bed after triple checking the locks.”

“Baby,” Francine coos, “you know your dad can help with this.”

“I know, I know. But if I tell him that I’m feeling watched, he’ll put a detail on me and won’t let me out of his sights. And I can’t do that, mom. I can’t feel so babied all the time. Dad’s love is so overpowering sometimes. But it’s -”

“- not a good overpowering?” her mom asks, raising her eyebrows. Francine closes the distances to Iris and gently tucks a strand of hair out of her daughter’s face. “I know your dad can be a lot to handle.”

Iris lets out a whimper. Slowly, she presses into her mom’s chest.

She isn’t wearing heels, but her mom is, which gives her the perfect ability to tuck underneath her chin. Iris inhales her mother’s sweet perfume, the same perfume she used to smell growing up, the same perfume that she has on her vanity as a way to feel close to her mom when she wasn’t in town.

“I just feel so small.”

Francine lets go and tugs at Iris’s hand, pulling her to the couch. She sits down and motions to Iris to set next to her.

“You work so hard, baby girl.”

“Not as hard as you,” Iris counters.

“You inherited my work ethic,” she laughs, “you also got your dad’s.”

“I don’t feel tired,” Iris furrows her eyebrows.

“Because you don’t let yourself,” her mom explains, “you always run on overdrive.”

Iris scrunches her nose. “Just a little.”

“Iris, you can’t overwork yourself so much. You have to let yourself lean on others when things get too hard.”

“I have you.”

“You do.” Francine pulls her into her chest and kisses the top of her head. “And I’m staying right here, for as long as you need me.”

* * *

 

“So where is that brother of yours?” Francine asks.

They’re parked outside of Joe’s house, waiting for Wally to come. It was his day to spend with Francine, on the second to last day of her visit to Central City.

Iris didn’t know how much she needed her mother’s warmth until she broke down in tears, and Francine held her in her arms all night, curled up with her under the blanket, chased all the demons away without even saying a word.

It helped a lot to spend the past two days with her, to be reminded that she always had someone to lean on when times got too heavy for her to carry alone. There was nothing more comforting than her mom’s embrace.

“I see him pulling up now.”

Iris watches as Wally parks his car and sprints towards the two of them.

“Mom!”

He hugs her tight for a few minutes, lifting her up and putting her back down.

Wally stayed with Francine after the divorce. He only left home to come study at Central City University, the engineering program more rigorous than the one offered at Coast City. But Iris knew how much Wally missed their mom. She also knew how much he was getting along with Joe now that they lived in the same house again, after all those years of being apart.

“Hey, sis,” Wally grins as he pulls Iris into a hug as well.

“Look at you two,” Francine stares fondly, “my beautiful babies.”

Wally grins. “If only she weren’t so short.”

“Shut up!” Iris socks his arm with her right hand and Wally feigns pain, which elicits a laugh from their mom.

“I know you two are taking good care of each other,” Francine says fondly.

“I try. When he’s not being a hardhead.”

“Real cold, sis,” Wally gapes, as he drapes an arm around his mom’s shoulder. “So today, I’m showin’ you all the hot spots in this city.”

“Wally, you say that like she's never been here before.”

“I know she has, but I’m spoiling her today.” Wally turns to look at his mom. “Everything is V.I.P. treatment for the best mother in the world.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “Kiss ass.”

“Iris!” her mom reprimands.

“Sorry, sorry,” Iris remedies as her brother sticks his tongue out and grins.

“Are you sure you can’t spend the day with us, baby?”

“I’d love to. But I have to meet Barry today to go over a few things.”

And she knows it’s coming, sees Wally’s mouth opening in her peripheral vision, knows something along the lines of _oooooohhhh Barry, Barry this, Barry that_ is going to come out of his mouth, so she jabs her finger into his chest before he gets the chance.

“Not a word from you,” she says, her infamous _Iris glare_ on full display.

Wally smirks. “My lips are sealed.”

“Well,” her mom shakes her head, “I don’t know what you and your brother are going on about, but he seems like a good boy, that Barry of yours.”

Iris nods her head. “Yeah, yeah, he’s a good friend.”

“ _Friend._ ”

“Wally!”

“Right, sealed lips, I promise.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you two alone.”

“So soon, sis?” Wally asks, the innocence in his eyes, and she really does want to smack it away. “We’re having so much fun.”

Iris ignores him. She goes to give her mom a hug, then gives him a hug as well. “Take good care of her. I’ll see you two tomorrow, okay?”

“See you then, Iris,” her mom smiles.

* * *

“The whole point of being here is to actually work, you know?”

Iris drops the phone from her hands as she watches Linda walk into her office.

“Texting your boyfriend?” the sports’ reporter teases.

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“Uh huh. That why every time I come in, you've got a dopey smile on your face?”

Iris rolls her eyes. “He is just a friend. And I do not smile _dopily.”_

Linda laughs. “You've got it bad.”

She plops down in the chair on the opposite side of Iris. “How’ve  you been feeling?”

“Better,” Iris says, “still confused about the IP address thing.”

“Scott and I tried everything to trace it. Are you sure you don't want to tell the editor? She might have a better idea.”

“No, no,” Iris brushes it off. “I don't wanna worry anyone. It might turn out to be nothing more than my imagination.”

“But it might be _something_ and you deserve answers to it.”

“I told Barry about it.”

Linda raises her eyebrows. “Did you?”

“Okay don't get any ideas. I just thought he might help. He knows some good hackers and stuff who are tech savvy.”

“That the only reason?”

Iris purses her lips. “You're not gonna drop it, are you?”

“Not until you admit you like him,” she grins.

“It's…” Iris trails off.

After their first coffee date at Jitters, Barry invited her out to another date, this time to the science academy. Then he kissed her, but it was one of those awkward, sloppy, short kisses, the type of kiss that isn’t so much on the lips as it is on the corner of the mouth that just barely grazes the lips. She justified as just being an _in-the-moment_ type of thing. They were both a little tipsy from one too many mimosas at the event and she didn't want to get her hopes up over it.

The few days after that were limited to just texting. He got busy picking up more overnight shifts and she got another story to cover. That was the last time they'd seen each other in a week.

She didn't exactly know where their relationship stood at the moment.

“Don't you dare say it's complicated. Nothing has to be complicated.”

“Lin-”

“- Iris.” Linda interrupts her. “You're already worried about someone being after you. Your job is stressful as it is. Let your relationship with Barry be the one thing that can stay _simple._ ”

Iris taps her fingers nervously on the desk. “I do like him,” she furrows her eyebrows, “a little too much and it scares me sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Ever since Eddie, I haven't dated much, and you remember how that ended.”

“Yes, but you fell out of love with Eddie but stayed with him because you're loyal.”

“He was a good guy.”

“But he wasn't the _right_ guy,” Linda reminds, “plus you don't have to commit right away with Barry. Just don't shy away from it because you're scared of the future.”

Right on cue, Barry knocks on the door of her office.

He bashfully steps inside, and Iris can see the bouquet of yellow lilies he's carrying his one hand, the other hand holding a tray with two coffee cups in it.

“Hello,” he waves.

“Well would you look at that,” Linda grins, eyes alternating between Barry and Iris. “He brought flowers _and_ coffee? This one’s a keeper, Iris.”

“Linda!”

Linda lets out a laugh and stands up, making her way over to Barry.

Iris can tell Barry’s shaking with nerves but doing his best to contain it, the tray quivering ever so slightly in his unsteady hand.

“There's a basketball game tonight,” Linda says, throwing Iris one last look, “I can get you two courtside tickets if you need something to do for your date.”

With that, she shuts the door and leaves.

“Ignore her,” Iris groans.

“Uhhh.” Barry hesitantly steps inside the office and places the tray on her desk. He slowly extends his hand, a shy smile coming to his face. “These are for you.”

“Thank you, Barry,” she says, taking them and smelling them. “That's very sweet of you.”

“May I sit?”

“Please!” Iris says hurriedly.

“How's your day been?” he asks, taking one of the coffees and handing it to her.

She takes a sip, and it's exactly her order, _an americano with one extra shot._ He remembered.

“It's been okay.” Iris sets the coffee down. “Thank you for this. Much needed.”

“Was office coffee not cutting it today?”

“It wasn't strong enough,” Iris laughs. “I had a long morning and needed something with an extra kick.”

“Oh right! Your mom’s still visiting, yeah?”

“Mhm. Wally took her for the day, though. She's leaving tomorrow.”

“Are you feeling okay about that?”

Iris lets out a sigh. “I always miss her when she leaves. It'll just take some time to adjust again.”

“I understand that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, “my mom's always working. It's rare that I get to spend more than a few hours with her every week. Sometimes, I just need her to bring my head back to reality.”

“Why’s that?”

“It's just been hard telling my dad I didn't want to go into medicine. He hasn't been the most supportive of the decision, and she helps mediate things between us a lot. She really encourages me to do what I find most fitting.”

Iris reaches her hand and drapes it over his. She holds her breath momentarily, waiting for his response, but then she feels him turning his hand and interlacing their fingers together.

Barry smiles at her.

“Your dad will come around, I promise.”

“Has yours?”

“He's better about it. He didn't want me being a cop and he doesn't like the _investigative_ part of my job, but he's better now than he was a few years back.”

“Good. You deserve the support.”

She smiles back. “Thanks, Barry.”

There’s a sort of unspoken tension between them. Maybe it’s because they haven’t seen each other for a few days, or maybe it’s because both of them are still thinking about the kiss _that wasn’t really a kiss, but definitely still a kiss._ It’s not overwhelming though.

Barry just looks at her with twinkling eyes and she has to remind herself to say something before she gets lost in them.

“So what are the plans for lunch?” she asks.

“Right! Do you want to come with me to meet Cisco? I think he was able to get a trace on the IP address.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. He and Cindy do a really good job with that sort of thing.”

“Cindy…?”

“His girlfriend,” Barry blushes.

“Okay, yeah. Let’s go meet them then.”

She lets go of his hand and grabs her coat and coffee. The flowers remain resting on her desk; she’ll come back for them after her lunch break and put them in a vase.

“Ready?”

“Yeah, ready.”

Iris stands in front of him.

For a few seconds, time goes really slow.

Her door is still closed, so it’s extra quiet, just the two of them in the room, the rush of the newsroom out of earshot.

He’s looking at her with eyes so soft and she doesn’t realize that their chests are almost pressed together, that they’re standing so closely to each other that one move and they’d be skin-tight.

And then, just when she thinks he’ll lean down, just when she gives herself a boost of confidence to lean up, he pulls away.

“Shall we?”

Iris doesn’t bother hiding the drop in her smile when he pushes open the door and waits for her to walk through.


	5. Chapter 5

Barry keeps twiddling his fingers together as he watches Iris laugh at something Cisco tells her. For a first time meeting between the pair of them, they seem to hit it off better than he would’ve expected, seemingly telling jokes and being touchy and smiley with each other.

“If you stare at them any harder, you might rip a hole through their shirts.”

He jumps at the voice and hand that clamps his shoulder.

“You dating her?” Cynthia asks.

He shakes his head.

“You wanna?”

He nods.

“Then why aren’t you?”

Barry lets out a sigh. Cynthia makes things sound so easy, makes it sound like human feelings and emotions are a moo point when it comes to social interactions of this magnitude. Asking Iris on a date - which he didn’t even specify to be a date, she did - was one thing, but asking her to be his girlfriend is a completely different thing, one he didn’t know how to do without potentially causing her to run away.

“She makes me nervous.”

“I made Cisco nervous.”

“I remember,” Barry laughs as Cynthia plops down on the chair next to him.

“He was wrapped around my finger.”

“ _Was_?”

She smirks. “Still is.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My point is him being nervous didn’t stop him from trying.”

“You said no at first.”

“Yeah, because I didn’t do long distance. I also kissed him and walked out on him. But ya know, we managed.”

“Quite the love story.”

“Barry,” Cynthia meets his eyes, “if you like her, you should say something.”

“I kissed her.”

“Did you?” she raises her eyebrows.

“Yeah. But I don’t know if it meant anything.”

And that’s the reality of it. They were both a little tipsy, and granted that’s not really an excuse to kiss someone, but he couldn’t resist the way she was holding onto his arm to keep from falling and how she was looking at him with eyes so wide and how her smile was all white and wide. He didn’t even kiss her lips really, it was more like a chin kiss. But that moment after he pulled away, he could’ve swore Iris leaned in again, like she wanted to kiss him more, like this was something that was real between the two of them.

But he got scared. So the moment passed.

“Have you asked her?”

“Asked what?”

“If it meant anything?”

He furrows his eyebrows. “Well...no.”

“Maybe you should.”

“What if it didn’t, to her?”

“You’ll never know till you ask, Barry,” Cynthia says. “Look,” she gazes over to Cisco and Iris, “they’re coming over.”

“Thank you two so much, truly,” Iris exclaims. She comes to stand before Cynthia, who leans in to give her a hug. “This is the first solid piece of evidence I have.”

Barry stares at the hand-written note, with the single word _Exodus_ on it. Cynthia already filled him in - they managed to track the IP address to an out-of-use computer in the facility, and it’s both nice to have that knowledge, but also terrifying because it makes the threat on Iris’s back a lot more real than he hoped it ever was.

But Iris herself doesn’t seem fazed by it, from what he can tell. She's still smiling her pretty smile and her eyes look big and gracious.

“Our pleasure,” Cynthia comments, “just make sure you call if you’re gonna go searching for anything.”

“Yeah, Iris,” Cisco advises, “we’ve got your back, whenever. Bae and I are always up for a little rendezvous with trouble.”

Barry lets out a deep exhale.

Cynthia and Cisco are definitely the adventurous pair. And Cynthia had a knack for giving people who try to mess with her a run for their money. But he really didn’t want anything of that nature to happen with Iris.

Call it overprotectiveness or maybe just silliness to be so attached to her already, but he can’t imagine anything happening to Iris without wanting to immediately run over and hold her, as if keeping her tight in his arms would remove the risk of all danger.

“I’ll definitely let you know. But now I think it’s time I head back to work.”

“Oh yeah,” Cisco remarks, “what’s it like being in a newsroom?”

“Busy,” Iris laughs, “and it smells of paper and coffee.”

“And ink,” Barry chimes in, which earns him a grin from her.

“Well, we’ll be in touch, and anytime you wanna give us a tour, let me know,” Cynthia says.

“Noted.”

On their way out of _Ramon Industries_ , Barry’s hand accidentally brushes against her’s.

It isn’t a subtle brush-of-the-hand either, but when he peeks over to look at her, her gaze remains straight ahead and he notices her hand hasn’t retracted either.

Barry thinks back to Cynthia’s words, _maybe you should,_ and maybe he should, should ask her if she likes him, should ask her if that kiss meant anything to her, should ask her if she wants to curl up in bed and wear his shirt in the morning, and all of this would be so easy, they’d work so well together; all he has to do is...ask.

* * *

 

“You are too good to me,” Iris smiles, opening the door wide and taking the coffee cup from his hand for the second time in one day.

She watches him walk inside her apartment door and momentarily lingers, before turning around to close the door.

“Anything for you,” comes his response.

Barry’s dressed a little nicer than he normally does. He’s got on a solid green button down with dark jeans and his normal pair of converse. That never changes when it comes to his outfits; it’s like the converse are his staple. Still, she likes the way the green of the shirt brings out the green of his eyes, and she likes that his hair is a little ruffled.

“How does caffeine not keep you awake?” Barry asks.

“I’m used to it. Caffeine is just the default at this point.” Much like converse are to him, coffee is a staple her.

“You’re amazing, truly.”

“You’re drinking it too!” Iris notes.

“Nu-uh!” he defends, “this is decaf!”

“Weak,” she teases.

She guides Barry over to her living room, specifically to the floor, where she's got a giant poster board lying on the ground, to go along with color-coded sticky notes and a few different colored whiteboard markers and sharpies.

She sits down, resuming her previous activities.

Barry hesitantly sits down next to her.

“You’re making a ti-”

“-timeline, yeah,” she furrows her eyebrows. Her artistic skills aren’t the best, but they get the job done. So far, she has a line that spans the entirety of the board. At the six week mark, she published her _Exodus_ article. At the four week mark, she got hit by a stranger, which resulted in the brace she still has on her arm (only four weeks left of keeping it on, according to the doctor). A week and a half ago, Linda told her she and Scott found fishy activity on her articles. And now today, she has her down _IP address linked back to Exodus Facility_ in bright red.

“It seems like more time than four weeks since I met you,” Barry remarks. She turns over to him to find him staring keenly at the board.

“Ye-yeah,” she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, “seems like a lot longer.”

Barry meets her eyes.

When he looks at her, she can see the conflict in his face, like he’s deciding exactly on what to say and how to say it. And she appreciates how his mouth opens, then closes, then opens again, as though he’s nervous to break the silence between them for something not worthwhile.

“You didn’t seem afraid today.”

“Hmm?”

“When...when Cisco and Cynthia told you they were able to trace the IP address. You didn’t seem afraid.”

She breaks eye contact and shrugs her shoulders.

“ _Iris_ ,” Barry calls.

And Iris gets that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach again, the one that hasn’t settled, the one that came back in full gear when they were at _Ramon Industries,_ but she smiled through it, because that’s what she does.

She's never wanted someone to feel burdened for her emotions. If anything, she's been taught to give, _give, give._ Maybe it was her childhood. Maybe it’s being an older sister. Maybe it was her parent’s divorce. Maybe it was having to quit the police academy. Maybe it was a combination of everything and more. But she's learned to internalize, to rely on herself more than anyone, to swallow down the feelings till she's alone, till she can hold herself through it.

“Hey.” His hand comes gently to rest on her back, and then slowly, he rubs up and down in the same pattern. Iris lets out another shaky breath.

The marker in her hand falls to the carpet.

She turns to look at Barry.

“I’m here,” he says, “I’m right here.”

“ _Iris_ ,” his voices comes again, quiet like the hush of the room, and she leans in ever-so-slightly, lets her body tip forward, mimicking what happened earlier in the day in her office at CCPN.

Except this time, he doesn’t break eye contact. He doesn’t pull away either.

They’re facing each other, her legs criss-crossed, his extending outward, their full length on display.

He brings a hand to her cheek and she realizes he’s wiping a stray tear that she didn’t know was falling.

And then, without another word, without any hesitation,  his lips are softly on hers, and all she can think about is _Barry._

She lets him pull her into his lap, lets him cup her cheeks and slip is tongue into her mouth, lets him rock her slowly to calm her nerves, and she melts into his embrace the second she pulls away.

Her head rests on his shoulder as she nuzzles her nose into his neck.

There’s a lot of quiet in her apartment. But for the first time in a while, it doesn’t feel so big.

Right now, it just feels like it’s the two of them, away from any threat and any timeline and anything that _hurts._ Right now, he’s just holding her close, whispering _I’m here_ over and over and she's clinging onto him like he’s her lifeline and crying into his shirt the tears she didn’t know were there. Right now, it’s just him anchoring her.

He keeps rubbing her back slowly. “Iris,” he calls again.

She finally pulls away to look at him, and she can see the tears in his eyes as well, threatening to escape.

Gently, Iris leans in and places a ghost kiss to his lips. She lifts her left hand to cup his cheek and tenderly grazes the stubble on his jawline. He’s got tired eyes, she can tell from being so close to him, but they’re still as soft as they were when she first met him in the ambulance, except now they look a little greener and a little bigger and she can count the eyelashes, can see how they’re so protective of his irises, can see just how long and full they look.

She places another kiss to the base of his throat.

“I-iris,” he says her name for the fourth time, and this time, she finally answers.

“Hmm.”

“Are you okay?”

A shy, sad smile draws on her lips. “I will be.”

“Are you now?” he pries.

And she doesn’t want to answer it, doesn’t want to admit a fear too large for even her to process, so she seeks refuge in his neck again, clutches her arms around his back and lets him hold her for another few minutes.

“Your coffee will get cold,” Barry whispers into her hair.

That evokes a small laugh.

“Cold coffee is still good coffee.”

He nudges her a little, and she goes reluctantly, pulls away just enough to meet his eyes.

His lips find hers again, momentarily, and then they’re parted, and she wants to tell him to kiss her again, to kiss her harder, deeper, to just go to bed and call it a day, but she stays quiet and waits for him.

“How can I help?” he asks.

She shakes her head. Another sad smile forms on her lips. “I’ll be okay.”

“But how can I help?”

Iris looks at him, can tell he’s all genuine and no show, can tell how much he cares about this by the way his hands grip her shirt and his eyes focus on hers.

“Kiss me again?”

And he does.

“How else?” he asks, pulling away just an inch from her lips, so much so that she can still feel the hot of his breath on the tip of her nose.

“Do it again,” she whispers.

This time, she doesn’t let him pull away. This time, she deepens it, opens his mouth up with her tongue, lets it slide in, lets it dance with his own while she bites down on his bottom lip, enough to hear the groan in his throat surface on his lips.

She clings tightly to the lapels of his button down, before one of her hand wanders down to undo the first two buttons of his shirt.

Slowly, she makes her way to unlatch every button, all while keeping her lips firmly pressed onto his, all while feeling his heartbeat radiate against hers.

“H…” Barry shudders under the press of her fingertips to his bare chest. His eyes flutter open, and she can tell he’s resisting harder than she is right now, can tell he wants this as much as she does. “H-how else?” Barry stutters out.

“Just take me to bed, Barry,” is all she says, and that seems to be all he needs because the next second, her legs are wrapped around his waist and he’s holding her tight as he carries her into the bedroom, as he lays her on the bed, as he shrugs off his button down and strips her of her sweatpants, as he lets his body fall on top of hers, as he kisses her so intimately that she forgets everything she was afraid of earlier, that the only thing on her mind is _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been following it so far! Just a quick note on update schedule - I think I have three more chapters I wanna write for this one, but they're all gonna be linked together, so it might take me till the end of the week before I post ch.6, because I wanna write them all and edit before posting anything. I hope I can manage it faster, but I'm not so sure how feasible it'll be.


	6. Chapter 6

“Do you always smile when you wake up?”

Barry breaks out of his thoughts at the sound of Iris’s voice. His eyes had been closed and he’d been wishing this moment between them wouldn’t end, but the smile on his face had apparently given him away.

He looks down to see her face and his heart nearly flutters out of his chest. Because there she is,  _ Iris _ , in the calm of the morning, with her head lying on his chest and her arm grazing his cheek ever so softly and her legs tangled between his.

“Only when I wake up with you,” he smiles, which earns him an eye roll from her.

He leans down to kiss the sweetness of her lips and tenderly rolls her over so she's lying flat on the mattress. He shifts his body to lay on top of her.

Barry interlaces both of their hands together and presses them firmly against her sides, as he deepens the kiss, morning breath be damned, as he nibbles at her bottom lip until it evokes a moan from her.

He thinks he could do this all day...lay in bed, skin-to-skin with her, while kissing her and touching her and feeling her chest vibrate with laughter against his. And she must be using some amazing skin-products, because she's all soft, smells of honey and lavender, has enough shine to bring the morning to life.

“Mmmm,” Iris moans into this kiss.

He breaks it off to pepper kisses across her jawline. And he’s debating between letting this go far enough for another round to complement the one from last night, or stopping and asking her if she'd feeling okay, because last night, she didn’t ever really answer him.

One of the things he was realizing about Iris was that she wasn’t quick to say what she was feeling. And he didn’t know if it was just around him, if it was that he was a stranger to her, but nonetheless, he wanted to get to know her more, wanted for her to trust him in the same way that he already trusted her, wanted to promise her that he’d be there forever, that he’d never leave her side.

_ Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzz. _

Iris’s eyes shoot open.

“Ignore it,” Barry whispers playfully.

“I wish,” she groans, reaching over to the nightstand, “but that text tone is from work.”

Barry moves off of her to allow her room to move a little more freely. 

“Hello?”

“Iris!”

“Hey, Lin.” Iris looks over to him with a hint of sadness in her eyes, but he doesn’t want her to feel bad, she really has no reason to do so, so he kisses her cheek sweetly instead, mouths  _ it’s okay  _ to her.

“Did you hear the news?”

“Ummm..I don’t think so?”

“You haven’t checked the local news yet?”

“Not yet,” Iris sighs, and Barry likes to think that’s because of him, because he made her all distracted and not so on top of her game, because she woke up in the late of the morning with him by her side.

“Exodus is closing down!”

“What??” Iris hurriedly sits up in bed. “It’s closing down!” she exclaims to Barry.

“What is?” he asks, a bit confused.

“Exodus is closing down!” Iris repeats.

“Okay, are you with someone?” Linda asks on the other line, “because I just told you that.”

“No, Lin, I’m sorry. I’ll get to CCPN right away!”

“Okay.”

“I have to go!” Iris says, as soon as she hangs up the phone.

She quickly bolts out of bed and as much as Barry understands her urgency, he can’t help but let his eyes linger on her naked figure in front of him.

“Barry!”

“Right, sorry, sorry,” he says.

“No,” Iris corrects. She turns around and catches him mid-movement. “I’m so sorry I have to cut this short.”

He smiles at her. “It’s okay,” he shakes his head, “I understand.”

“Really, I promise, I’ll make it up to.”

Barry pushes the covers off him and gets up, coming to stand before her. He gently rubs her arms up and down, then moves to push a strand of loose hair out of her face and behind her ear. Tenderly, he leans in to kiss her. 

“Don’t worry.” he whispers, stealing another kiss before fully breaking away. “I understand.”

“I’ll call you when I’m done?” she asks and he can see the hopefulness in her eyes.

But he’s working a 12-hour shift starting at 4, and knowing Iris, she won’t be out of the newsroom till at least 6.

“I have work,” he sighs apologetically.

She pauses a bit. He watches as her hands come to settle on the nape of his neck, watches as her eyes dip to his lips before coming up to meet his own eyes again. “When do you get off?”

“4 a.m,” he laughs.

But he notices she doesn’t.

“Come over then.”

He furrows his eyebrows. “You’ll be asleep?”

“It’s okay. Come over after your shift.”

“Are you sure?” And he just has to ask it again because he can’t believe she’d open her home to him at that late of a time, can’t believe that Iris West really is giving him a promise of another meeting between the two of them.

She nods her head. “I would like you to come over after work, Barry Allen.”

He grins. “Okay.”

“Okay?” she asks, her smile happy.

“Promise.” And Barry seals that promise with one last kiss. For now.

* * *

“Dad, I really can't talk now!”

As the words leave her lips, the coffee cup she's currently carrying almost leaves her hand as well. She manages to catch it at the very last moment, however some spills onto her finger and  _ god  _ it burns. 

Her purse rests on her forearm, and it's proving to be exceptionally heavy today. Maybe it's because of her laptop or maybe it's just where it's positioned, but she can tell it’s leaving an angry red band around her arm. 

Between the phone, the coffee cup, her purse, the brace still on her arm, and the door she'd currently trying to push open, Iris feels all-too overwhelmed. 

Never did she think Exodus would actually close down. Usually when the best journalistic pieces inspire some conversation, but unfortunately, rarely do they get the exposure and commitment to make a tangible change. 

“Iris, this is important,” Joe says.

“Okay, okay.”

She decides to set the cup down on the curb next to her and plops down next to it as well. CCPN can wait the two minutes it’ll take for her to have this conversation. She lets the purse fall to the ground, and she traps it between both feet, securing it in an upright position.

“Hi, dad,” she lets out a deep exhale. “What's up?”

“You remember how we weren't having luck tracing down the car that hit you?”

She nods. “Yeah I remember. No one got a proper license plate reading.”

“Well, turns out someone did. They called in to report it a few weeks ago, but the intern didn't think it was important to bring to my attention.”

She almost feels bad for that intern. Iris knows how protective her dad can be when it comes to her, and she really wouldn't want anyone to deal with the consequences of interfering with that. 

“I'm sure it was an honest mistake,” she says, though in all honestly, she's a little peeved herself. 

“Yeah, well, he doesn't intern here anymore. Anyway, baby girl, the car was rented out by someone who works in that hospital you wrote your article about.”

“Exodus?"

“Yeah. It was rented out in the name of a nurse. But when we checked their directory, it turned out she hadn't been working there in over a year.”

“That's...strange.”

“We followed up with the supervisor a few days ago. And he was supposed to get back to us today. But I'm sure you've heard the news.”

“Wait, you found out early last week and didn't tell me _? _ ”

“Iris.” She can hear the guilt in her dad’s sigh and  _ this right here _ , this is the reason she doesn't like including him. “I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't get hurt again.”

She could argue this. And she  _ should _ , but the more rational side of Iris knows he’ll never change his ways, and has accepted that her dad will always do things like this, even if it means lying to her. 

“Okay.”

“I want you to have a few cops with you for a bit.”

“No,” she says fervently. 

“Iris, it's for your own safety! The center just closed down today, you don't know what could happen!”

“Dad, no! I'll manage without.”

“Iri-”

“No!” She concludes. “Look thank you for telling me. I have to go to work.”

She hangs up the phone without another word. 

As she finally pushes the door open into CCPN, her mind races through all the information she just learned today. 

Someone from that facility that had  _ just  _ closed down had been responsible for throwing her car over the cliff. And she had no idea what to do, no idea why everything decided to click today. 

“Iris, hey.” Linda pulls her across the newsroom and into her office before anyone can get another word in. 

“You okay?” The sports’ reporter asks as she shuts the door. 

Iris paces across the office a few times. And in moments like this, she's thankful Linda allows her her space to process what's on her mind. 

“I don't know, Lin.”

“What's up?”

Iris stops and turns to face Linda. 

“My dad just called.”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently the person who hit me was connected to Exodus.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Iris rubs her temples hard, hoping that’ll relieve the headache she can feel beginning to form. “God, I don't know what to do.”

“Okay, breathe.” Linda rushes to her side and pulls up a chair for her to sit in. 

Iris gladly takes the solid seat. It's good to have support, not currently trusting her shaky knees to hold her up for much longer.

“No one knew it would close down!”

“Yeah, but your article was really powerful. It hasn't stopped trending since you published it.”

Iris’s eyes shut firmly. She's thankful it had the impact it did, truly, but she didn't think publishing it would be exposing her life to danger as well. 

And it's not like she's ever shied away from danger. Iris loved the adrenaline, the adventure that came with finding the truth, the sense of justice that would also accompany it. That was the reason she became an investigative reporter - she wanted to make a difference, make an impact to the people whose lives were affected, who deserved to know the truth about their community and about their world. 

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Linda reassures her, bending down to her level. “Iris, you won't get hurt.”

Iris drops her head to her hands. “I didn't think it’d escalate to this point.”

“You don't know that anything more is gonna happen. Maybe they gave up after the hit-and-run?”

“Yeah, maybe they did,” but even as those words leave her mouth, she has trouble believing them herself. 

Ever since the start, she's felt like she's been in the spotlight, and now it feels like someone turned the brightness all the way up.

* * *

Amidst the chaos of the day, Iris completely forgot about seeing her mom.

Francine was meant to spend the day with her, her final one before she would go off to Coast City once more. But between the call from Linda and the call from her dad, Iris had spent much longer than she anticipated in CCPN, following up on why exactly Exodus had closed down  _ today. _

She checks the time on her watch. It was a quarter to 6, and she was meant to be with her mom three hours ago.

She knew why Francine hadn’t called to check in on her. They had their own special system; Francine let Iris be as free as she wanted to be. That kind of trust was hard to come by, but Iris had never let her mother down, not during high school or college, and that same trust extended into the now. Even if her mom was concerned, she’d give Iris a few hours for leeway before checking in to see if everything was okay.

Iris figures she's doing the same now.

As she steps into her apartment complex, Iris pulls out her phone and opens up her contacts to press Francine’s name. A few rings go by before her mom picks up.

“Hi baby.”

“Hi momma,” Iris says apologetically, “I am so so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Iris. Your father told me what happened. Are you doing okay?”

Iris makes her way up the stairs.

The complex looks uncannily quiet tonight. Usually, there would be at least a few people walking in and out as she’d make her way to her apartment, but no one was in the staircase or in the corridors either.

“I’m a mess.”

Her voice cracks as the words escape it, because truth be told, this was all too scary. And she wishes she had taken her dad up on the offer to have a police escort tonight, but she didn’t want to succumb to the fear, didn’t want to believe that she had to be protected against someone who really was after her.

“Do you want me to come over?” Francine asks.

“No no, don’t worry. I’ll come to you and pick you up.”

Iris takes a few moments to fish for the keys in her purse.

She allows the phone to rest between the side of her face and her shoulder as she rummages through the other things she has, most of which are pens. It was an old habit - probably not the best one - to accidently take a pen from wherever she was and forget to return it. So they just accumulated in her purse.

“Iris, you don’t have to.”

“I will. I don’t think I want to be here tonight anyway,” Iris says, as she finally manages to find the keys and pull them out. “It’ll be better to spend the evening with you and Wally.”

“Okay, baby.”

She gets the key into the lock and hurriedly twists it. For some reason, her senses were on high alert and she didn’t want to be alone for another second.

Iris opens her door and steps inside, quickly turning all of the lights on in her apartment.

But just as she goes to close the door, she feels a hard grip on her upper arm. The phone falls out of her hand. In another second, there’s a cloth to her face and soon after, everything goes dark.


	7. Chapter 7

As Barry walks over to his car, he checks his phone.

It’s currently 11 p.m, and given his shift was so slow tonight, he was able to get another medic to cover it with Caitlin.

They had a total of 2 transports to the hospital. The average he has during the first half of his shift is 5, but on this shift, it seemed like no one in Central City was having a medical emergency.

And given he's a little too excited about seeing Iris, he thinks maybe he can meet with her earlier than 4 a.m.

He unlocks his phone and finds a red circle with the number _1_ on top of phone icon. Barry opens it to find a voicemail from an unknown number.

He plays it.

_Hello, Barry. This is Francine West, I’m Iris’s mother. Iris abruptly ended our call not too long ago and I can’t seem to get ahold of her. Do you know where she is? Please give me a call back when you can._

Barry stops in place.

_Iris._

Quickly, he dials Iris’s number. He calls once and it goes straight to her voicemail. He calls again as he gets into his car and the same thing happens over again.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

Barry panics. He just manages to get the keys into the ignition, his hands shaky and sweaty from the fear that something happened to her.

His mind races through the options.

The last he’d heard from Iris was during the morning, when she told him to stop by at her house after the shift. That was it. He didn’t know anything else had happened to her, other than that she had to fly off to CCPN.

Barry quickly presses the _call back_ button to return Francine’s call. It’s late, but he has to know what happened with Iris, given she's not answering her phone, given he has no other way of knowing she's safe.

“Hello?” comes a concerned voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi, hi!” Barry stutters. “I’m so sorry for calling so late, Ms. West. You called earlier about Iris, and I was wondering if you found anything else? I tried to get a hold of her, but she didn’t answer.”

“Barry -”

Barry hears the residual panic in her voice, as well as the exhaustion. And none of this is sounding good.

“ - we’ve been looking for her all evening. We can’t seem to find her.”

“You and Joe?” Barry asks.

“And Wally. He went to go check her apartment. Right now, we’re all back at CCPD. Joseph ordered a warrant for Exodus.”

Barry shakes his head. “I…” He stops the sentence in its tracks. He can’t believe Iris has gone missing, can’t believe that what started out as such an amazing morning with her could turn into this. “This morning she got a call from Linda that Exodus was being shut down.”

“Yes. Joseph filled me in.”

“She might have gone there to do follow up on something? Did she sound worried when you were on the phone with her?”

“She sounded worried, yes,” Francine says, “and then her voice cut off without warning. When I tried to call her back, she didn’t pick up.”

“So you think she's been kidnapped?”

“It’s what we’re leaning towards.”

Barry’s heart sinks. _Kidnapped. Iris has been kidnapped._ He can’t believe it no matter how many times he replays the words over in his head. She was just with him this morning, he was holding her in his arms, and now she's not here anymore. If only he didn’t have a shift tonight, if only he could’ve been there for her.

“Barry?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Do you think she’ll be at Exodus?”

He lets out a sigh. “They might’ve taken her there...whoever kidnapped her. Maybe it’s for blackmail or maybe they’re trying to…”

His voice trails off. He doesn’t want to speak those words into existence, let alone think them.

“How far are you from there, Barry?”

“I’m still at the ambulance station. I can get there fast, though. Maybe 10 minutes.”

“Okay. We should get approval for the warrant soon. I’ll have Joe alert the rest of the police department. We can meet you there.”

“Okay, okay,” he says.

He hangs up the phone and turns off his car and goes flying out the door. An ambulance car will get him there much quicker, and this may very well get him fired from his job, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take to find Iris.

Iris can’t be hurt, _won’t_ get hurt, he refuses to believe it. And he’ll save her if it’s the last thing he can do.

* * *

 

The first thing Iris notices when she wakes up are the white walls staring back at her.

She vaguely remembers this room; it seems all too familiar with its colors, stale and dry, and its temperature, cold and unwelcoming. Her head feels heavy, as does her arm. Slowly, she manages to turn her neck slightly to the side to find the brace still in place, as her arm hangs loosely on the side of the bed.

She pulls it up to her side.

The mattress feels cold. There is no blanket covering her, but there are two black straps draped over her body. There are no sounds anywhere. The pillow holding her head up is hard and uncomfortable, and suddenly Iris knows exactly where she is, the realization making her skin fill with goosebumps.

_Exodus._

Earlier in the night, she remembers talking to her mom. Then everything faded to black, a stark contrast to the white she's seeing now, but the smell of something sweet is still in her nose, and her mind reasons it must’ve been chloroform, that whoever did this to her had an entire plan mapped out and she was always two steps behind, had access to her key, to her home, to her entire _life_.

“Iris, Iris, Iris,” a sharp, low voice calls out.

She blinks a few times, in attempts at focusing on the figure before her.

“Finally awake after your nap?”

He’s condescending. She'd talked to men like him before, the ones who stuck their nose so high up in the air, the ones who thought they were all-that and then some, who didn’t know humility if it was staring them in the face, who had an ego to match the size of arrogance.

“Wasn’t a voluntary one,” she counters, her voice groggy, and she feels so tired, has to fight the urge to close her eyes again, _wants_ to be awake for this conversation, away from the mercy of whoever put her in that slumber.

“See,” he moves towards her, “this is the problem with people like _you._ Unappreciative. Ungrateful. Thankless.”

“That’s what I am?”

“Well, how would you explain it?”

She tilts her head to the side as he comes to stand by her bed, and he’s tall, a lot taller given the disadvantage this bed is giving her.

And she knows who this is, knows he’s the supervisor of the Community Behavioral Services in Central City’s Public Health Department, knows he’s the one in charge of allocating funds and services, of assigning resources and education to mental health awareness, knows that he’s the reason Exodus is the failure that it is.

“You want me to say thank you for drugging and kidnapping me?”

He smirks. “I gave you a bed, didn’t I? Gave you a room. A place to stay. Some medicine to _calm you down,_ since you seemed so panicked when you came into your apartment.”

Iris scoffs.

And he really believes this, she can see it in her eyes. He’s a master manipulator, one who believes that helping someone after he’s caused their pain is an act worthy of praise and respect.

“Is this not enough for the great journalist of Central City? I suppose not.” He paces by her bedside, his hands coming to clasp together in front of his chest. “I mean, you’re the one who quit working in the mental health field to stick your nose into affairs that didn’t concern you. Tell me, Iris, who are you to _expose_ anything we do to serve the mentally ill when you yourself didn’t have the commitment to work in the profession?”

“As a concerned citizen, am I not allowed to be curious?”

“The concern is all for show. You just want your recognition.”

She feels the effects of the drug wearing off her. Iris starts to regain control of her limbs, can move her fingers a little easier without feeling like they’re so heavy, can open her eyes all the way, the need to squint long gone.

He’s got her full attention.

“Recognition for what, exactly?” she asks.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? False outrage. False anger. False victimization. What Exodus did was _good,_ but you needed something to distract the community from the real issues.”

“And is mental health treatment not a real issue?”

“Sure,” he grins, “for the weak.”

“The weak?”

She knows his credentials. He graduated from a top university with an MBA degree, a degree that gave him no authority to work for anything public health related, outside of maybe the policy division. Yet, he managed to score a position because of connections with other higher up officials, because of a system designed to award those who are unqualified and unsuited positions that have serious implications.

“Come on. You really think this is some kind of social justice you’re doing?”

“Advocating for better healthcare treatment? Yes! Yes, absolutely!”

“Getting a little angry there, are we?” The condescending tone is back in his voice.

She calms herself. Her eyes follow his finger and she can see the Desflurane he’s pointing to, the anesthetic probably there for her to be drugged with.

“What do you want from me?”

“It’s simple, really,” he says, “just admit you were wrong to publish the article.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll never lie about the truth.”

“Iris, you don’t really have a choice, do you now?”

“Yes I do!” she spits back. “Just because you have me now, it doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it!”

The straps on her stomach and around her hips prevent her from moving as much as she wants to. But she's shaking with fury, cannot believe he has the audacity to demand from her a request like this.

She should expect it though. He’s the same person who funneled money that was rightfully granted to Exodus to his pocket and the pockets of the minions who helped him do it. He’s the same person who’s let so many go untreated, who’s underpaid nurses and understaffed the hospital, who’s stifled the efforts of important of research.

He laughs at her efforts of moving.

“You’re a sadist,” she angrily remarks.

“No.” He stops fully in front of her, and she can make out the graying hair on his face. “I’m a realist.

“What you were doing was negligent and you know it! If you think you’re being blamed for something that you haven’t done, you need to get a grip on reality.”

“I was providing assistance to those in crisis,” he says, his voice calm. “I was assisting the public in keeping the crazies off the street.”

“Crazies…? They’re real people! With real feelings and real needs and they deserve to be visible and treated with respect!”

“They’re moochers, Iris! They want the benefits of the system while claiming they’ve got some _delusion_ in their heads, when no one can prove any of it!”

She's fuming now. All the research she's done about it, all her courses at university when she got her Master’s in Criminal Psychology, all of the people she met while interning and those she interacted with on a daily basis, the ones she interviewed for this exposé, they were all telling the truth, they were _honest_ , and it most definition wasn’t, isn’t, won’t ever be _just_ in their heads.

“Why do you even work for the Public Health Department if you have this mentality? What’s the point of it?”

“My mentality is perfectly fine. It’s people like you who need to change theirs.”

She watches from her peripheral vision as he reaches for the inhaler of Desflurane, and she knows the request is going to come up again.

“Iris, this can go on for far too long between us,” he smirks, “but there’s only one solution to it all.”

She remains silent.

He waits a few seconds before resuming his speech. “I will tell you again. Apologize for what you wrote….admit you’re just a green journalist seeking some attention...say you were in the wrong, and you can walk out of here with no harm, no damage.”

Slightly, she turns her head. “And if I don’t?”

He towers over her bed, leans down so that she can feel his breath on her cheek, and she _hates_ him with everything she can muster.

“Then this anesthetic floods your system. And we keep doing this till your body gives out.”

“They’ll find you,” she says, and she does believe it, her mom will find her, her mom has to be already looking for her...her dad too…

And maybe Barry as well, maybe he’ll notice something’s happened when he doesn’t find her at the apartment in time for their date tonight. Right now, she wants nothing more than to be in his warm embrace, to be back in bed with him, buried under the blankets and wrapped safely in his arms, to reset this entire day and erase it out of existence.

“One more chance, Iris.”

“No,” she whispers, soft but assured.

He raises his eyebrows. “Suit yourself.”

Iris feels the drug flow back into her system, and before she has time to process anything, to try to fight his grip on her chin, the world fades to black once again.

* * *

“CLEAR!”

Barry waits with Francine as Joe and his squad team go inside Exodus first. As badly as he wants to follow Joe inside, protocol forbids him from entering the scene without ensuring safety first, and he's already broken enough rules tonight. Given Francine is with him, he doesn't want to compromise her safety either.

There are too many lights, the red and blue shining mercilessly, illuminating the dark black night. This is the first time he’s ever seen Exodus so empty. There are no cars in the parking lot, and no lights coming from the hospital inside. If it weren’t for all the police cars and his ambulance, it would feel like some sort of abandoned psych ward, one that is the generic setting for any horror-mystery movie.

He looks to Francine and surprisingly, he finds her calm and reassured. She glances over to him. “Iris will be okay, Barry.”

He doesn’t have her level of poise, is too frantic and nervous to believe that, but he appreciates her presence, both in the now and when she called him and let him know that Iris was missing.

“SHE’S IN HERE!” Joe shouts from deep inside the hospital, his voice ringing in the night air.

Barry’s heart nearly falls out of his chest. He wills his legs to run as fast as they can and he makes his way inside the hospital, inside the room to where Joe signaled to, only to find Iris laying on a bed, alone, strapped in by two black buckles,seemingly unconscious.

If he wasn’t trained to handle situations like this, he doesn’t know how he’d feel walking in and seeing this sight, doesn’t know how Francine can feel right now given this is _her daughter_. He pushes those thoughts aside as his reflexes kick in. The nervous energy dissipates and he runs over to her bed, now the only thing on his mind to save Iris.

“Barry! Is she okay?” Francine calls.

Barry puts his hand to feel for a carotid pulse while lifting Iris’s chin up to open her airway. He brings his ear to hover over her mouth, but he can’t feel a pulse, and he can’t hear any breaths either. He does a mental count of seven seconds. When there’s still no response, he begins compressions.

“She’s unconscious,” he huffs, as his palms thrust into her her chest. _1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6..._ he keeps count of the compressions. “Can you get the oxygen mask?” ... _10, 11, 12, 13, 14._

“Where?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off Iris. “In the box on the gurney.”

_...18, 19, 20._

Francine hurriedly picks up mask and rushes over to his side.

“Okay,” Barry says, still counting, “on 30, give her two breaths.”

“Two?”

“Squeeze the bag twice…29, 30.”

She administers two breaths. Barry quickly resumes compressions, still not feeling a pulse on Iris.

“The AED,” he says, quickly. “It’s on the table.”

Francine goes to get that. _...5, 6, 7, 8, 9…_

“Open it and turn it on.”

She follows his orders, and turns on the machine.

“You need to get the patches...” Barry says, a little breathless, “take the stickers off.”

Francine does so.

He stops compressions to administer two more breaths and begins again, watching as Francine pulls up Iris’s shirt and puts one pad on her lower abdomen and the other on her upper chest.

 _“Shock advised_ ,” the machine says as soon as it’s loaded.

Barry steps away. “Stay clear,” he tells Francine.

“ _Clear. Shocking now.”_

“Stay clear,” he repeats as the machine gives a shock to Iris.

Immediately after, he resumes compressions.

He does one more set. Once he’s done, he checks for her pulse and, by some miracle, he can feel a very weak pulse on her neck, but it’s a pulse nonetheless.

“Barry...her chest…” Francine points out, and sure enough, there’s chest rise as well, which means she's resumed breathing.

“We need to get her on the gurney,” Barry says. “High-flow oxygen will flush out the anaesthetic they drugged her with, but she needs to go to the hospital.”

“Of course.”

Together, they roll Iris over to the gurney, careful not to hurt her, especially not to reinjure her arm which is still secured in its brace. He watches her as she opens and closes her eyes, clearly coming in and out of consciousness. And as much as he wants to hug her, to tell her everything will be okay and that she’ll be safe, that she’ll be _okay_ , he’d rather her sleep it off. So he administers the oxygen and wheels her out to the ambulance.

“Tell Joe to meet us there,” Barry says, strapping on his seat belt. Francine sits in the back of the ambulance with Iris.

“I’ll call him now.”

With that, Barry turns on lights and sirens and floors it, driving faster than he’s ever driven before. He knows she’ll be okay, but he won’t rest until he sees it with his own two eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

“I hate hospitals,” Iris murmurs, taking in the surrounding setting.

Her mom rests at her bedside, one hand interlaced with her own, the other cushioning her head on the bed.

“Baby.”

“What happened?”

Francine shakes her head. “What’s important is that you’re safe.”

“My ribs hurt,” Iris winces, as she looks down to see the rest of her body. Hospital colors are very unflattering, on her and everyone else. It’s another one of those rules that goes without saying, like the one about paramedics not getting crushes on their patients.

“That Barry Allen of yours has a strong set of hands.”

“Bar..” Iris pauses, remembering the date she inevitably missed with him, and how they were supposed to meet at some point. She's not sure of the current time, but it feels like the window for seeing him has already passed. “Barry? What happened?”

“Don’t think too hard, now,” Francine coos, “just let that beautiful head of yours rest.”

“Did he get away?” Iris asks, because she has to know at least partly what happened leading up to her being in the hospital.

“Your father caught him,” Francine reassures, “he's in police custody.”

Iris frowns. “Dad’s mad at me, isn't he.”

“Iris, you did nothing wrong for your father to be upset. You did your job.”

“But he told me - he told me I should have an escort.”

Francine sits by her bedside, and Iris scoots to the best of her ability to make room for her mom. “Even if. Joseph should've known better than to you lie to you. This was your story to live, baby. And look at you now. You will be okay and the people who did this to you won't see daylight for a long time.”

“Your mother’s right, Iris.”

She watches as her father walks into the room and towards her bed, bending down to place a kiss on her temple. He brushes her hair back. “I should’ve told you.”

Iris gapes at her dad. “Okay” - she turns to face her mom, who has a grin on her face - “what did you say to him?”

“A mother never reveals her secrets,” Francine winks, gripping Iris’s hand a little tighter.

“But you need to be careful,” Joe interjects, “you’ve got yourself two fractured ribs and that arm of yours still isn’t healed. No work for the next two weeks. No straining yourself. No big stories. Just take it nice and slow.”

“Bu-”

“Iris,” Francine comments, “I do have to agree with him on this.”

Iris groans. Her parents laugh.

“Wally promised to be at your service for the next few weeks. And I reckon that Allen boy will help.”

She turns to face her dad. “You know Barry?”

“‘Course I know him. We’ve run some calls together. He was adamant on saving your life. Last night when we got you to the hospital, his supervisor wasn’t too thrilled at him for stealing an ambulance car.”

“Barry stole an amb-”

“He did. But I think he’ll be okay at work. I tried to put in a good word for him; the most that’ll happen is he gets suspended for a few weeks.”

And as much as Iris wants to feel guilty for being the reason for his suspension, she can’t bring herself to, given the laughter in her parents’ eyes, and she thinks maybe this’ll be the perfect opportunity to get to know the boy with golden brown hair and pretty green eyes a whole lot better and thank him for saving her life twice.

“Where is he now?”

“He had to fill out some paperwork,” her mom fills her in, “but you should get some rest, sweetheart. Barry will be here when you wake up.”

“And we’re not going anywhere either, baby girl,” her dad adds.

That’s all the reassurance Iris needs to let her head fall back comfortably on the pillow and sleep off the exhaustion for a little while longer.

When she wakes up again, a few hours later, the same pretty green eyes that she’d been dreaming about greet her out of her slumber.

Barry sits next to her on a chair, his eyes piercing into hers, warm and soft and _very_ green as he intently watches her.

She gives him a shy smile.

“Hi.”

He smiles back. “Hi.”

There’s no tension between them. Maybe just longing and a sense of relief. She's missed him, more than she expected she would, and just like he did with her apartment, he makes the hospital feel a lot less intimidating.

“Sorry about your ribs,” Barry says sheepishly, “I tried to be careful.”

“You broke ‘em?” she raises her eyebrows.

His hand comes to the nape of his neck, and even in the seated position, she can see his shaky legs and his shaky palm and she smiles just a little knowing she can do that to him.

“I...I tried not to. But sometimes, I can’t control it.”

“Thank you, Barry.”

“For…?”

“Breaking my ribs and saving my life?” she jokes, the statement coming out like a question because she wants this to be playful, doesn’t want sadness anymore, has become too tired of running away from something, and now all she wants to do is enjoy her time with him.

“Ahh,” he laughs. “Just my job.”

Iris looks around the room. “Where are my parents?”

“Well, the way your mom made it sound, they’ve got a list of people to interview and question for everything that happened last night. Plus the guy lawyered up, and your mom was not happy about that.”

“No…” Iris sighs, “bad mistake on his part. Mom might have a few words with the attorney they give him.”

“I’m sure Joe will cover for her,” he grins.

Iris nods her head.

She turns the palm of her hand upwards, hoping he’ll take the hint to link his hand with hers. Sure enough, not a few seconds follow, and Barry has their fingers interlaced. Slowly, he brings her hand up and kisses it gently, lingering on it, and letting out a long exhale.

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

Wearily, she nods her head. “Just tired.”

“You…”

He stops before speaking again, and Iris rubs her thumb gently against his knuckles, giving him a little push to say what’s on his mind, wanting to know, wanting to share this moment with him, with all honestly, with no words left unspoken.

“...I was so scared when Francine called,” Barry sighs, “I didn’t know what happened.”

“Chloroform and a kidnapping,” she laughs.

But he doesn’t.

“Before I ever met you, rumor had it you were relentless,” he admits, “and always on the go and so dedicated to your work.”

Iris listens.

“I’m sorry these people used that against you, Iris.”

Iris shrugs her shoulders. She unlaces her hand from his and brings it up to caress his cheek. His eyes are still tired, maybe more now than she remembers them ever being, his skin a little too cold for her liking, his nose a warm red, but he’s still her Barry, the same Barry who made her afraid of the fall, only to catch her and never let go, this whole time.

“Just my job,” she says, mirroring the words he’s used on her so many times before.

“You’re really good at it. It...it matters. All of this. You being so brave and so strong and willing to risk your life to help others.” Barry meets her eyes again. “When I first started this job, I became really depressed. It happens, you know? You see so much pain and so much death and nightmares come with it and it’s just...it feels like there’s too much grief in the world. And there’s really no outlet for it; either you become cynical and laugh or you let it become all-consuming.

I was always so ashamed...felt like I wasn’t strong enough to handle it, felt like people would look at me differently because every little trigger would set me off. And the days I had off, I just didn’t have the energy to do anything else, didn’t want to go anywhere or see anyone because I was afraid I’d lose them too.”

Iris wipes a stray tear that falls on his cheek. She brings her hand back down to his own and grips it tightly.

“You taking the time to do this...to care about people who are often treated like they’re invisible...that matters. And I just...I hope the people who were responsible for it get locked away for life.”

“I hope so too,” her eyes twinkle.

It’s then that Barry stands and leans over, his other hand coming to caress her own cheek, much like she did not too long ago. He brushes his nose against hers, before bringing his lips to catch hers in a kiss so light, so gentle, that she thinks it may have not happened. But then he does it again, kisses her again, and this time, she kisses back harder, almost pulls him on the bed with her, but he refuses to come.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Barry whispers when he pulls away.

Their foreheads rest against each other.

“You know,” she hums against his lips, “if I hadn’t been a journalist and you hadn’t been a medic, we may have never crossed paths.”

“I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t pursue alternate career paths,” he smiles.

And that’s just the thing. Sometimes Iris wonders what would’ve happened had she used her Master’s in Criminal Psychology instead of switching over to become a reporter. Part of her knows the job would’ve been a little better. Steadier at least. She’d be making more money, could probably follow a normal 9-5 schedule like everyone else. But writing this exposé and hearing what Barry just told her reminds her of all the reasons she chose this job instead.

Journalism mattered...matters. And reporting matters. There were only a few honest crafts; she wasn’t oblivious to the fraud that could happen even in her field, but something about chasing the story - in all of its rawness and truth - made all of it enough. That she could be the reason to bring someone to justice, that she could give voice to the voiceless, that she could use her pen as her greatest weapon, that its ink was the fight she had within her...that made everything - the tears, the headache, the late nights and too many coffee cups, the strained family relationships and broken friendships and connections - it made all of it worthwhile.

And hearing it first hand from someone who was directly impacted by what she had done...well, that would make these next two weeks she’d have to spend in bed as a good reminder for all the stories that still needed to be written.

“But you still wanna be a CSI?” Iris asks, watching as Barry sits back down in his chair, still not letting go of her hand.

He nods his head. “I’m thankful for everything this job has taught me,” he says, “but I think it’s time I start saving lives in a different way.”

She smiles at him.

Barry the paramedic was great at his job and she’ll always be thankful for him. But she still doesn’t like the sound of it, even after all these weeks of getting used to it, and somehow, she knows Barry the _CSI_ will have a better ring.

* * *

 Iris steps into his lab for the first time since he got a job at CCPD.

This is only his third day here, but from what he’s told her so far and from what she's seen, when he greets her in the evening after they’ve both gotten off work, he’s a lot less tired nowadays.

They’ve been together for three months, officially. Though, if it were up to her discretion, she’d say they’ve been together for four months, because she fell for him the minute he called her after her hit-and-run to check in on her.

A lot has happened since.

He just about moved in with her during those two weeks she was bed-ridden. When she got the clearance to start working again - though her dad _insisted_ that she be very careful and ask for a flexible schedule - and he got un-suspended from his own job, she realized how much she missed having him around. She missed falling asleep in her bed with him embracing her warmly, to some cheesy rom-com or intense documentary that they would both get super into, missed being awakened by his kisses, along her jawline and tickling her neck, and she missed how he’d bring her coffee every day, sometimes more than once, how he’d always have a fresh pot ready to go, how he’d cook them dinner and make sure her place was clean, how he wouldn’t leave her side till he absolutely needed to.

And it’s not like Iris enjoyed people fussing over her. But with Barry, it was different. There was never any imposing, and she never felt like she owed him anything or that he didn’t want to be there. Barry made things a lot easier. He was optimistic and hopeful and he liked to smile a lot, a  real big smile that made her smile in return because of how cute he looked, with his ruffled hair and puppy-dog eyes, because he liked tickling her and telling her how she defied all science, how he didn’t want to be anywhere else than with her.

“Working hard?”

Barry spins around, dropping the case file from his hand. “Iris!”

He hurriedly makes his way over to her and picks her up in a tight hug.

“You came!”

“Had some time off.” She stands on her tippy-toes to kiss him. Even in heels, he still towers over her. “Thought I’d bring coffee and stop by.”

Barry takes the coffee cup from her, takes a sip, and sets it on the desk to his side. He then takes her by the hand and sits on his chair, bringing her to sit on his lap.

“I’m glad you came,” he smiles.

She scrunches her nose. “It’s a big lab.”

“Right!” he says excitedly. “It’s the best! I have so much space and they have such cool tools to use!”

She laughs. He can be a real nerd - an adorable one at that - when it comes to this, and truthfully, she wouldn’t want it any other way.

“How’s the microscope I got you?”

“The best! It makes the lab complete.”

Iris captures his lips in another kiss. Keeping her hands off him is a problem, one that still doesn’t have a solution, although she _really is_ trying. At CCPN, when Barry comes to visit, Linda always manages to catch them making out in the office, which Iris has chucked up to best friend intuition for teasing purposes. Cisco texts her _get a room_ at least once a week and Wally feigns disgust and barges out whenever he sees them together, though her brother can exaggerate way too much when it comes to this stuff and she's ready to give it back to him, given she knows he’s got a crush on Linda.

Nonetheless, the kissing is a problem. But Barry doesn’t seem to mind it much.

Because he kisses her back with fervor every time, like now, like how he’s already got one hand on her butt and the other tangled in her hair.

She pulls away, too breathless and slightly dizzy to keep going much longer. “Someone might walk in.”

Barry shrugs. “I don’t care. My Pulitzer-nominated girlfriend came to visit and I think that’s all that matters.”

“...even my dad?” Iris teases, kissing the tip of his nose.

“...okay, maybe not him.”

She laughs.

That was the other thing.

Both her and Barry had rejoiced the day it was announced that the entire Behavioral Division got fired. Iris played a significant role in choosing the new staff, and she had Barry have a big say in it, given his history, given he worked directly in the field and had access to a lot more people than she did.

A new Exodus, one by the same name, would be opening soon, except this time, there would be three psychiatrists there at all times, the nurses would get more flexible schedules, and there would be a lot more funding allocating to quality improvement for the patients to come.

As for Iris?

A few weeks ago, she got a call from The Pulitzer Prize Board, choosing her exposé to be a finalist for the Local Reporting category.

“You think he likes me?” Barry asks, honestly.

Iris brings both hands to cup his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter,” she grins, “I like you. And I’m keeping you for a long time, Barry Allen.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, that’s good,” Barry says, with that boyish charm she's grown to love. “Because I love you.”

“Does that mean you’ll cook for dinner tomorrow…?”

Tomorrow night was going to be the first time her parents and brother and Barry’s parents met, and they were all coming to dinner in Iris’s apartment. Her dad had insisted they do it at his place, but she felt like it’d be better in her home, where she can host and feel a little more in control of what happens.

“Everything?! I can’t possibly make the 10 dishes you’ve got in mind!”

“But you’ll help, right?"

Barry holds her tight. “Well, that was always a given.”

“My hero,” she smiles, pressing her lips to his once again, and it is a given, that he’ll always be there for her, helping her when she needs it and supporting her every step of the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for following this story! I hope it's been enjoyable!
> 
> And feel free to come say hi on Tumblr - withaflashofloveff :)

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks to iriswestthings for being my beta (the best beta) :)


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